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Girlvinyl

Ten comics publishers, including industry powerhouses Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa, collectively announced on Friday that they are withdrawing from participation in the Tokyo Intl. Anime Fair, the biggest event of its kind in the toon biz.
Kadokawa earlier made an independent announcement that it was ankling the event, which is skedded for March 24-27, under the sponsorship of the Tokyo city government.
The publishers, which call themselves “Comic Ten Companies Association,” oppose a bill submitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on Nov. 29 that would tighten restrictions on so-called “excessive sexual depictions” in toons and comics sold to youths under the age of 18. Strongly supported by Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, the bill, opponents claim, threatens freedom of expression.
“We strongly distrust the position of Governor Ishihara and (Tokyo) municipal authorities, which lacks respect for comics and animation creators,” the group said in a statement.

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KAMI-SAMA HATES FAGS: YAOI FINAL SOLUTION

“Anyone who claims it’s not harmful to children to draw manga that features the sex life of married couples and the such are idiots. Tell them, ‘You need to go cool your heads.’” Ishihara responded to the Tokyo Parent Teacher Association’s December 3 petition in support of the bill by saying, “It’s not just about children. We’ve got homosexuals casually appearing even on television. Japan has become far too untamed. I’ll go forward with [this bill] with a sense of mission in heart.”

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Tokyo’s ban on anime, manga and games featuring “virtual crimes” or which are “likely to interfere with the healthy development of youth” has passed after the DPJ agreed to support it.
The DPJ’s only addition to the critical portion of the law was a short rider which requests “prudent application of the law in light of any artistic, social, scientific or satirical merits the work might express” – it does not however add any legal obligation to consider these, or establish any clear or indepdently enforced criteria for judging whether a work can be declared “harmful” or not.
Even more bizarrely, the final draft actually removed a passage that imposed “a duty not to possess [photographic] child pornography” on Tokyo residents, whilst leaving the section banning erotic manga and anime (and explicitly excluding photographic materials) all but unchanged – that the bill is intended exclusively as an “anti-otaku” law seems to be beyond doubt.
It is very difficult to objectively assess the scope of the law – along with vague and subjective terms like “interfere with the healthy development of youth,” the law also includes “etc.” on the end of most of its examples, leaving it quite unclear, for example, whether the “improper glorification of illegal sexual activity, etc.” applies to only virtual sex crimes, or all crimes in general – presumably the interpretation adopted will be whichever is convenient to censors.
Similarly, the ban’s mention of “rape and other sexual acts which violate societal norms” seems inevitably to point to a ban on depictions of homosexuality, considering who was behind the law.
The generally expected form the law will take is that of a “amakudari” (a pervasive system of sinecures for retired bureaucrats) body which will inspect all anime, manga and games, with only those titles receiving approval as “healthy” able to be sold regularly in Tokyo shops – the rest will be relegated to the “adult corner.”
The most immediate and direct effect of the law will almost certainly be to see ecchi manga such as To Love-Ru, bishoujo titles such as Champion Red and most BL manga, as well as any seinen manga with especially mature themes, banned from general sales – presumably most will then be cancelled due to a lack of suitable magazine or tankobon distribution channels, with a few perhaps being resurrected as 18+ ero-manga.
As has already been seen, publishers will also likely be purging future anime, manga and games of any content liable to fall foul of the law, and removing older titles from distribution.
The law probably also spells the end of most late night anime in Tokyo (and by extension, everywhere else), which it would appear to ban under its distribution clause; given the vague wording of the current season alone it seems Ore no Imouto, Panty & Stocking, Yosuga, Sora no Otoshimono, Milky Holmes and others would all fall foul of its various stipulations.
There is also some doubt as to whether Comiket will be able to be held under the new regulations – if not, its cancellation or removal to another prefecture seems likely, although a lack of sufficiently large spaces may severely complicate this.
The law is expected to be signed into law on the 15th after an additional vote and then come into effect in July of 2011, so with magazine, tankobon, anime and game release schedules being what they are, it seems likely its effects will be felt much sooner; in a genuinely democratic state there might be scope to overturn it before then, but from what has been seen so far it seems unlikely publishers have the guts or savvy to do anything about it.

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Moeologist

Bound to happen. It's Japan trying to make it look as if it has standards when it just so happens that the people who do oppose are just a bunch of NEETs that are too afraid of leaving their house to do anything. Of course, the otaku really have to look at themselves and see why the older politicians want to better them.

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EDF Hero

Bound to happen. It's Japan trying to make it look as if it has standards when it just so happens that the people who do oppose are just a bunch of NEETs that are too afraid of leaving their house to do anything.

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Hypocrites. They could at least stop pretend that they kill whales for science.

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Moeologist

Hypocrites. They could at least stop pretend that they kill whales for science.A neat summary of the rationale behind the horrors of the 20th century.

If no harm is done to persons of flesh and blood, then there's no crime.

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Pretty much. Then again this whole "ban" is otherwise ambiguous. I just noticed that these articles were from a year or two ago. There are other news sources that have stated that the ban is simply categorizing pornography into adults-only sections of stores. Sankaku Complex isn't even a news source. It's just a blog that has posts obsessing over 2ch and messing up plots of SOL anime.

Essentially otaku have no idea how to present themselves in public. They tend to act horribly embarrassing and perverted which stained their image which had politicians flipping shit over them. They just feel extremely self righteous and believe that they are obligated to just stay at home and watch anime.

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Lawlman

Lots of things are banned in Japan but the Japanese don't give a shit. Gambling is banned, for instance. But it's widespread. If the Nips don't think it's hurting anyone and/or if the Yakuza can make a profit from it then nobody's going to enforce it.

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Girlvinyl

if people want to see homosexuals and crimes on television, it shall now have to be on American television.

and I've heard before that Japanese society isn't exactly tolerant of homos.

also why did you post something so ancient?

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S-shut up thats why!!.....
B-because I was making a IRONIC commentary on how some that had passed so long ago had absolutely no effect on the content of anime and manga being flooded everywhere, and the same images from the same banned sources are being posted just as strongly (if ever) on /a/ /e/ /c/ and other anime image boards.
Totally NOT because I was browing around and didn't check the dates on sites that suspiciously HAVEN'T CHANGED THE FRONT FUCKING PAGE OF THEIR SITES IN ONE TO TWO YEARS and thought to myself "Gee, there should be a thread."
Ok?
..............